metafour

Kiley McDaniel's ranking of prospects traded: #2: Jake Bloss (50 FV) #7: Joey Loperfido (45+ FV) #21: Charles McAdoo (40+ FV) #26: Jonatan Clase (40+ FV) Honorable Mention: Cutter Coffey (40 FV)

Womp womp. Kiley McDaniel just released his ranking of all of the prospects traded at the deadline. #2: Jake Bloss #7: Joey Loperfido Guess he didn't get the memo that they were just overrated prospects from a s***** system. By the way; he has Bloss over Klassen, Agustin Ramirez, Lesko, Liranzo, etc. He has Loperfido over all 3 of the notable prospects the Padres traded for Jason Adam (Snelling, Mazur, Pauley).

He is elite, but there is a long way to go. He has 15.7 career WAR at age 24. Francisco Lindor by comparison had 22.8 career WAR at the end of his age 24 season.

Yesavage just signed. Slightly overslot so that likely finishes out our class unless Gavin Smith isn't signing for mch more than $150K.

Bo has a lot of leg injuries that are piling up. All to the same leg as well I'm pretty sure. Vlad was just a case of whether he could remember what made him good in the first place.

Connor Norby is just a more hyped version of Davis Schneider. Pedestrian EV data and strikeout concerns with passable at best defense at 2B. Schneider actually hits the ball harder than Norby. Norby is super overrated.

It doesn't work like that, but OK!

Bloss has thrown 10 MLB innings. Zero point trying to pick apart his stuff (which is up since being drafted a year ago) in a sample size that small . Its 6 years of control of a #4-5 starter; potentially #3 if he keeps improving. Loperfido has obvious risk. Could be Derek Fisher, or Teoscar Hernandez. But he can play defense so it's a valuable bench option regardless. Wagner has some elite underlying data. He is basically Spencer Horwitz-lite. You are correct that none of these players are likely to be stars, but it isn't often that you are getting three players who are all a fart away from potentially putting up 1.5-3 WAR in the MLB for a half-season of a non-elite starter.

In the last 5 seasons they have had 5 different players finish in the Top 5 in ROY voting in the AL. So every single season they have brought up a new rookie from their farm system who has made an MLB impact. Regardless of their "MLB farm system ranking" (lol) they are churning out young MLB talent year after year. That is the actual purpose of "drafting" by the way (it isn't to rank high on some arbitrary list). As Carlos mentioned, during this period they were also penalized by losing several top picks, so their yearly allocated bonus pools have been among the lowest in the league. Despite this handicap they continue to find players who are shooting through the minors and onto their MLB team (like Bloss). Many of these players aren't giving them many "prospect list points", either because they are moving too quickly, or because they are being undervalued by writers and by the time its known how good they are they are already playing at the MLB level and no longer eligible to pad their prospect rankings. Jeremy Peña for example has been a ~3 WAR shortstop and he never made a single MLB.com Top 100 ranking (I think he may have made one BA list one year in the ~80-100 range). The other obvious "proof" for their drafting and development is the fact that the vast majority of their team is home-grown.

The Astros are seriously good at drafting/developing. All 3 of the guys we received were underslot college draftees that weren't selected with top picks (Bloss 3rd round, Loperfido 7th round, Wagner 18th round). Loperfido and Wagner were even College Seniors.

Sure, 2023 may in fact have been a 3 WARish season without "bad luck", but a ~3 WAR 1B still isn't worth whatever his asking price is, so it really doesn't change the narrative on whether we should extend him. $300M+ requires him to hit with the current/2021 batted ball/plate discipline metrics. This is the big question mark. If he is going to sign his mega deal and revert back to making poor swing decisions (and thus revert back to ~3 WAR) then it will be a really really bad signing.

You can pretty clearly see obvious differences in his plate discipline and batted ball metrics from 2024 to 2023, so it can't be all "luck". His 2021 metrics look very similar to 2024, so there appears to be a sweet-zone with him that produces the best results. He is swinging less often this year (nearly a 3% drop in overall Swing% from PY) and is being more selective at what he swings at (Called strike % is up by 3.2% and his Z-Swing% is down by a whopping 5.4%). Subsequently his Hard hit% is up by a whopping 6.2%. His Barrel% is up by nearly 3%, and his average EV is up by 2.4%. What this tells me is that he is reverting back to being a "smart hitter" and looking for "his pitch to hit", and subsequently crushing it. Post 2021 it seemed like he got high on his success and he started just swinging at whatever was in the zone (and then he would get in bad counts and start expanding outside the zone as well). Since he is so talented he was still making contact, but it wasn't good contact. His IFFB% was 11.7% in 2023 and 11.2% in 2022; it is at 5.6% this year and was 7.7% in 2021. I think it really is as simple as it sounds: he is making better swing decisions and therefore making better, harder contact (versus swinging more often and making shittier contact, which is where he was trending in 2022 and 2023).

Did he sign a "bad deal", or are you seriously understating the fact that DH/1B contracts are clearly suppressed and have been for 7+ years now? Even if he signed a "bad deal", he didn't leave $200 million on the table. Its not like the Astros were sitting there expecting to have to pay him $300M, and Alvarez turned around and said "how about $115M?" Players in the MLB are paid relative to other similar players. The impasse here is that a totally "fair" offer for Vlad is likely ~$200-225M. But he expects to be paid $300+M. And there is no precedent for that signing, so what makes him the exception?

Yordan Alvarez's extension just two years ago: 6 years, $115 million. He signed it when he was 24 years old, had elite seasons behind him, and was in the midst of an elite season in 2022 when he signed the extension. Again, which team is lining up to pay a 1B/DH $300+ million with no guarantee on his hitting? What makes Guerrero worth nearly 3x as much as Alvarez? These are the questions that any MLB front office is going to need to answer.

Clearly they do considering that I've seen about two dozen iterations of these posts: "gotta give credit to Atkins here", "who is letting Atkins make trades", "can't believe they're letting Atkins sell our players", etc. etc. There is a greater than zero chance that Atkins has already been benched and isn't making ANY decisions.

Loperfido is like Derek Fisher/Teoscar Hernandez - ironically both also came from the Astros.

The Blue Jays are a think-tank organization. I have no idea why everyone keeps bringing up Atkins as if he is making moves in a vacuum alone. Even before this failure of a season he wouldn't have been making decisions alone. Now that this team is "re-tooling" and his job is in serious question, I would be even more shocked if he was being left alone to make these trades. You guys need to remember that this FO has former Astros GM James Click sitting in it. I wouldn't be surprised at all if he has been granted more decision making power by Shapiro with these trades. The Indians had Antonetti, Atkins, Stearns, and Falvey all in the FO at the same time at one point under Shapiro.

Its Billy Wagner's kid.

Sounds like there might be 2 more prospects involved.

Ha ha ha ha.

Reports coming in that the Astros have scratched RHP Jake Bloss from his start tonight. Kikuchi or Flaherty?

Correct, they are terrible. Which means they need MUCH MORE than Arozarena and his 110 wRC+ little boy. So obviously the big acquisition of Justin Turner is a game-changer. Dipoto really not wasting that pitching staff trollolol. Maybe we can ship them George Springer next? Another proven playoff hitter for the ALL-IN Mariners!

And I am telling you that they are NOT doing what they need to do. Their offense is absolutely horrific. Adding Turner is pure desperation. You never answered me: why didn't they ball-up and acquire Parades instead of Arozarena? THAT would be a difference-maker. Instead they are hoping that Arozarena who is hitting .215 is going to bounce back? Their offense is littered with .220 hitters already. You're going on about how they are adding "proven playoff hitters" and yet they may not even make the playoffs.

The Jays needed a SS (Bo injury) and added DeJong. The Mariners needed a 1B and added Turner. It is literally the same caliber of trade LOL.

Hey dumbo, I'm responding to someone who is trying to make the argument that the Mariners are making mountain-moving offensive acquisitions in order to "not waste their elite pitching". This is in reference to acquiring Justin f***ing Turner who isn't even close to being the best hitter on a Jays team that hasn't hit for most of the season. This is barely an anything acquisition; no different from the Jays trading for DeJong last season like you correctly mentioned. Wake me up when Dipoto actually acquires a difference maker. THEN you can talk about how he's "not wasting his pitching".